


we weren’t stitched up quite right

by orphan_account



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bipolar Disorder, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 06:41:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2683007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ian's tailspin is exactly as bad (maybe worse) than Mickey thought and he has no fucking idea what to do about it. (Or: A character study of Ian Gallagher before, during, and after he jumped on a bus with his brother's social security number and an undiagnosed mental disorder).<br/>ABANDONED</p>
            </blockquote>





	we weren’t stitched up quite right

            Ian Gallagher is acclimated to reliability. He’s fucking solid, he doesn’t screw up too much. When he does, he hides it pretty well. Ian is in JROTC, he wants to serve his country, he studies for tests, and he doesn’t make a habit of beating up kids who don’t deserve it.

            He knows that he’s reliable because the first Thanksgiving that Monica and Frank bail on them is when he is thirteen years, and Fiona gives him a twenty and tells him to take Debbie and Liam to the supermarket to buy some stuff for dinner, since they’ve got nothing but instant oatmeal and a cup of narrowly expired strawberry ice cream. He goes to the only store that’s open, Kash and Grab, which is only a few blocks away.

            “Look, Debs,” Ian says. “They have some turkey already made here! We don’t even need a turkey this year!” He’s holding up a packet of cold cuts, but it’ll work. He buys potatoes, the turkey, a bag of frozen green beans, and some pre-packaged cranberry sauce.

            Kash offers him a job. “Your siblings seem to trust you a lot,” he remarks.

            “Yeah, they do,” he answers proudly. Ian Gallagher knows how to get shit done. “When do you want me to come in?” he asks, and Kash gives him a print out of the store schedule.

            “Come on, Ian! We don’t wanna miss Thanksgiving!” Debs tells him, and Ian returns to their house where Fiona is lighting some old birthday candles and sticking them in a pumpkin pie.

            “When do you think Mum and Dad are coming back?” Debbie asks with a mouthful of mashed potatoes that actually turned out all right tasting.

            Lip laughs a bit shortly. “Let’s hope not for a while.”

            Debbie wrinkles her nose in confusion. “Don’t you want them to come back, Lip?”

            Ian gets to his feet just as Lip opens his mouth. “Hey, Debs will you help me scoop the ice cream? It’s your favourite, strawberry!” he tells her, and whisks her away into the kitchen. He knows Lip is angry, and he’s angry too, but he doesn’t want to stick a kid in front of that type of rage.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Lip finds a gay porn folder that he made a few years ago between the bookshelf and the wall. He kind of forgot that he made that thing- with all the fake titties and hourglass figures pasted to the front like some sort of stupid cover-up.

            He kind of wishes he weren’t gay, because trying to find guys who are the same way without getting the shit kicked out of him on the wrong side of the tracks is such a fucking pain. But sex with Kash is pretty good, even if he’s a bit whiney.

            “Roger Spikey? Fucking donkey dick Roger Spikey? The original beefmeister? Or did he start that rumour?” Lip is exclaiming while they take a bit of a smoke break in the van.

            “Not a rumour,” Ian replies with somewhat of a smirk, because it isn’t. He fucked him a year or so ago and remembers taking a sharp inhale when he removed his trousers and pants, and he recalls being very glad that the thing wasn’t going up his ass.

            “Woah, that was a bit gay. What you just did there with your eyebrows,” Lip remarks with a bit of a chuckle. “You want to watch that.”

            Ian flips him off and laughs.

            “But seriously, like up the ass? Do you get used to that? Can someone get used to that? I mean, the whole point of the digestive system is one-way traffic. It just is.” His brother is less of an arsehole than he could be about it, and honestly, that’s the best he could have expected. Ian’s not going to fucking explain how anal sex works though; he does have to draw the line somewhere.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Ian storms into the Milkovich household with the intention of beating the shit of Mickey. That’s why he brings the crowbar, after all. That, and even the silver spoon types living in the quaint, elegant bungalows Chicago is so known for would know that one does not enter the Milkovich household without a few contingency plans.

            Beating the shit of Mickey isn’t a contingency plan though. Mickey’s flagrant shoplifting does not at all surprise him, but Mickey’s crossed a few dozen boundaries by striking Kash and stealing a gun from the store. Ian’s somewhat of a stand-up young man though, so he wakes him up before making any attempts on Mickey’s remaining brain cells.

            Less than ten minutes after smacking him on the back with the crowbar, like one might hesitantly nudge an easily provoked feral animal, he finds himself ripping open a condom wrapper on fucking Mickey Milkovich’s bed.

            He doesn’t know what on earth happened to lead up to this moment. He tried to fight Mickey Milkovich, which went about as well as expected- he ended up pinned on the bed with a knee on either side of his face, a crowbar only a half metre from his skull. He flinches, but something changes because suddenly they are pulling their shirts off and unbuttoning their trousers.

            Ian takes (too much) pleasure in flipping Mickey over and slicking lubrication over his fingers for the prep, during which Mickey is predictably impatient. Ian fucks Mickey rougher than he fucked Kash or Roger Spikey, because even though his ass is pretty nice and his dick doesn’t look half bad, he’s still an arsehole. Literally, Ian will reflect later in the shower.

            “Stop wanking in the shower, Ian! We don’t have enough money in the water bill fund for your sexual frustration,” Lip chides from outside the bathroom door without too much heat.

            “Fuck off, you nailed your girlfriend in here last week!” Ian shouts back over the noise of the shower, and allows himself one more moment to close his eyes and recall the slide of his cock, the push and shoves, and Mickey’s face as he met each thrust with one of his own. He can’t believe that he fucked Mickey Milkovich. Ian finishes rinsing the soap from his hair and shuts the water off.

            “Finally,” Lip says, rolling his eyes.

            “Can you toss me a towel?” he asks, ducking his head out of the shower curtain.

            “Yeah,” his brother replies, walking to the toilet and unzipping his fly to take a piss.

            “Since when did you join fight club? You show up with a new black eye every day, man,” Lip remarks casually, clearly not actually interested in an explanation. Lip and Ian only expect each other to answer questions when shit gets really serious, which it clearly isn’t.

            Ian shrugs it off and grabs his toothbrush from the countertop.

            “Ian, Lip! The electrical and the gas bills are due tomorrow and we’re forty dollars short! Any spare funds?” Fiona yells from the kitchen. They can hear her dumping out the squirrel fund jar onto the counter.

            “Yeah I’m taking an SAT II in Physics for some meth-head Serbian, and he’s dumb enough to pay the jacked up charge,” Lip replies. Ian’s planning on picking up an extra shift or two at the store, so hopefully they won’t have to layer up in seven dozen sweaters to avoid freezing to death once winter kicks in.

            “I’m out,” Ian says.

            “Breakfast?” Fiona asks him, gesturing towards the box of cereal sitting beside the now room-temperature bottle of milk, which at this point is probably half water to make it last long enough.

            “Nah, I’ll get something at Kash and Grab,” he replies.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Ian likes Mandy actually. Now that she’s not trying to get into his pants, she seems a bit all right. She helps him sometimes with school, since she’s actually pretty good at English, and plays video games with him.

            “You want some cookie dough?” she asks him, holding up a yellow plastic package.

            “Sure,” he answers without looking up from his notebook. “But I have to head out and do some drills in about an hour.” He would like to pass English, since last quarter he got a C-. He’d like to go to West Point one day, at the acceptance rate’s something like 10%. He’ll be hard pressed to get wait-listed with Bs and a few As, let alone Cs.

            “So why do you do JROTC? It just seems like a fucking ton of work,” Mandy says, plopping back down on the sofa.

            “We get to shoot guns and learn hand to hand combat,” he tells her with a shrug, since that explanation will make a lot more sense to her than some lofty aspirations of a high-strung military academy.

            “You can do all that shit just living in South Side,” Mandy replies, passing him the package of raw cookie dough.

            “Doesn’t this stuff give you salmonella or something?” he asks, tearing off a piece.

            “Everyone says that but no one ever gets sick. It’s like a conspiracy or some shit,” she answers in between chews, un-pausing their video game.

            “You didn’t finish explaining direct objects and indirect objects,” Ian says, but he’s already tossing his notebook aside.

            “And you didn’t finish telling me who you slept with, you know, the one who’s not Kash,” she says teasingly.

            “I told you, he’s not out,” Ian replies. He’s not going to fucking tell Mickey’s younger sis that he’s screwing her brother in the back room of a local convenience store.

            “Neither are you. At school, anyway,” she points out, eyes glued to the screen.

            “I do have some sense of self-preservation,” he answers with a laugh, but in reality he doubts that anyone would particularly care. Maybe if it were twenty years ago he would have been cornered in the locker room every day and thrown into dumpsters. But Ian does push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, all that shit every day, and he knows how to hold his own when someone tries to beat up on him. But if Terry Milkovich ever found out that Ian Gallagher was bending over his son in dark storerooms, he would be killed. That isn’t a figure of speech or an exaggeration; it’s a fact.

            “No one’s going to mess with you when you’ve got a girlfriend,” she giggles, propping her feet up on the coffee table.

            “I’ve got you to thank for that,” Ian replies, because having a girlfriend with long nails and a mean haymaker in a South Side high school can mean a lot. It does mean a lot.

            “Aw, you’re sweet,” she says, slinging an arm around him for a sideways hug.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Mickey’s house is right next to an L overpass, and by now he knows how to get there so he runs. Ian knows how the L works better than anyone in his family, because he had to do some orienteering training for JROTC one summer and now reading a map clicks pretty well in his brain. The tracks form veins all throughout the city, and even though he usually doesn’t pay the fare when he rides, he still knows all the defunct stops, all the overpasses good for smoking and hiding, and where the rails go.

            Monica is back.

            It’s hard to hate family, especially hard to hate a mother or father, although Lip does manage pretty well. Ian can’t hate people that easily, and he doesn’t thrive off of thinking of the worst possible scenario. Monica leaving isn’t the worst possible scenario though, it’s actually the best.

            Ian knows he won’t be able to hate her but he’ll try to at least keep his distance because Monica will attempt to suck all his younger siblings back into her web. And she will, because when you’re young you trust your mum and dad, even if they’ve been shitty for the whole time they’ve held that title. And then she’ll leave again, and everything will be especially fucked up for a while. He loves his family, and he doesn’t like to see them get screwed over.

            “I need to see you,” Ian tells Mickey when he opens the door. It’s bitterly cold, and he forgot gloves and a scarf in the rush to get the hell out of there. He folds his arms and shivers, rocking back and forth partly out of nervousness and partly to generate some fucking body heat.

            In the background, Ian can hear Mickey’s dad drunkenly shout something about dirty laundry. He can’t believe he showed up here of all places, and Ian knows that something must be fucking wrong with him if he thinks finding Mickey Milkovich will help him settle his problems.

            Mickey agrees to meet him at Kash and Grab in twenty minutes, and Ian knows that he can see how much of a wreck he is. He doesn’t comment on it at the doorstep, or in the storeroom. He just bends over and yanks down his trousers and pants while Ian gives him a handjob. Then they fuck against one of the shelves of new inventory. It’s the third time they’ve done this here, but not the third time in total because they did it twice at Mickey’s.

            “Fuck, Gallagher,” he groans, and Ian grabs the metal pole over Mickey’s hand and snaps his hips at a sharper angle and tightens his grip on the side of his hip.

            Later, he’ll reflect that he vaguely heard some movement in the store, which should have stopped them mid-thrust because the door was locked and no one was supposed to be here. But they’re grunting and the shelves are rattling, and god he just wants to finish.

            The door to the backroom opens and suddenly Kash is standing there. He looks fucking pissed. Ian freezes, Mickey straightens up and shouts something angrily at Kash. He shoves him into a stack of shelves, and runs while he’s still trying to re-button his trousers.

            Ian pulls up his pants and trousers, and picks up his shirt and jacket off the floor. Mickey forgot his scarf, and he loops it around his neck while Kash stands in the doorway, looking deflated for a brief moment before he gathers up his fury.

            “Ian, what are you doing with the Milkovich kid?” his voice is low and barely controlled, but Ian finds it more annoying than sexy.

            “What does it look like I’m doing?” Ian asks him.

            “It looks like you’re messing around with the kid who made it his personal mission to ruin this store. Didn’t he punch you in the face?”

            “Not recently,” Ian replies, brushing past him.

            “Your shift isn’t over!” Kash tells him.

            “I’m not leaving,” he says, returning to the register. He opens up the plastic container of bagels and doughnuts, since he hasn’t eaten lunch and it’s around 14:30.

            “You’re going to start stealing too? Like your boyfriend? Wouldn’t that be a laugh, if you and him decided to start shoplifting from small businesses together?” Kash laughs like a man who has nothing left to lose, and continues. “It sounds like a nice date idea-“

            Ian rolls his eyes at Kash’s rambling, but he’s more than a little offended by the implication that he’s going to end up like Mickey. “I’m not a thief,” he interrupts, pulling his wallet out of his jacket pocket with a certain viciousness. He doesn’t have any bills on him other than a twenty, so he counts out the quarters and drops them in the register. He leans back on the stool and crosses his arms. “And Mickey and I aren’t dating, we’re just fucking. Are you gonna fire me?”

            Kash exhales deeply, and looking up at the shitty ceiling tiles and flickery fluorescent lights as if there’s something up there that might help him out. “No.”

            “Great,” Ian replies, and the conversation is thankfully cut short when a woman steps inside with a baby on her hip. He recognises her vaguely, she’s an Iranian women who lives a few blocks down; she’s friends with Linda (although he can’t imagine how anyone could be friendly with her).

            “As salamu alayku,” the woman says to Kash, who musters a half-smile that could be construed as somewhat friendly. “How are your kids, Mr. Karib? Congratulations on the pregnancy by the way, Linda just called me to tell me about it.”

            “Wa alaykumu as-salam,” he replies. “They’re doing great, Mrs. Namazi.”

            Ian takes advantage of Kash’s distraction and heads behind the store. He isn’t a chronic smoker like some of his family members, but every now and again it takes the edge off. And god, he could really use an edge off.

            “Hey, Ian,” a girl’s voice says, and Ian nearly spits out his cigarette. He starts coughing.

            “Jesus fuck, Mandy, what are you doing here?” he exclaims, trying to catch his breath.

            “Somebody’s jumpy,” she laughs. “I sucked off a guy who works at the movies down the block, and he offered to sneak me in if I didn’t tell his manager. Wanna come?” she asks with a devilish smile, taking his cig for a quick puff.

            “Sorry, Mands, Linda’s watching the security tapes all the time now, and if I leave she might fire me.”

            “How about tomorrow? You’re not working then, right?” she asks, pouting out her bottom lip.

            “Sure thing, sounds great.” Anything to get away from the house when Monica’s around, he’d rather not be there when all of it goes to shit.  
            “All right, see ya around then?” Mandy asks him.

            “Yeah. see ya.” She kisses him on the cheek with a smile and then she’s gone.

            He finishes his cigarette and is just heading back inside when the produce shipment truck arrives.

            Ian signs for the shipment even though the truck drivers should know better than to think that his name is “Kash Karib” and that he’s a 32-year-old man, and helps them unload the truck onto the steps. He’s just finishing with the inventory (it’s late, probably 9) when he hears gunshots. The fact that there are gunshots isn’t by itself unusual- it’s South Side after all. But Kash is the only one in the store, and all of the sudden there is glass shattering so Ian runs from the store room.

            Whatever he was expecting to see, it wasn’t Kash wielding a gun on Mickey Milkovich. God, the guy must really want a price on his head. Kash couldn’t hit the broad sign of a barn from a few dozen metres away, but they’re much closer than a dozen metres and Kash looks fucking furious.

            “Kash, what are you doing?” he shouts.

            “It’s a fucking Snicker’s bar!” Mickey shouts, ducking as a bullet hits some bags of crisps only a few centimeters shy of his skull.

            “Fuck!” Mickey screams, because the third shot doesn’t miss and hit a shelf of foodstuff- it hits Mickey’s upper leg. Ian is no anatomy genius, but the upper leg isn’t the best place to get a bullet it. It has some big blood vessel or some shit. He falls pretty much as soon as he’s shot, clutching at his leg.

            “Holy shit!” Ian yells, and he flails uselessly in place for a moment. He had to take a 6-hour CPR and Basic First Aid course for JROTC, but it was run by some deaf old lady from North Side who probably didn’t even know what a gunshot wound looked like.

            “Jesus Chr-“ Mickey grunts out, and Ian finally gets over the initial shock to remember that he should probably put pressure on the wound. And call 911.

            “You okay? Hey, hey, look at me,” he says in a rush. He’s not even aware of what he’s saying or doing for a moment; one of his hands drifts to hold the side of Mickey’s face, a calming gesture, while the other drifts down to the bullet hole currently spurting little jets of blood. He unties his apron and crumples it to push down on the wound.

            “Shit, shit! Fucking hell, Gallagher, that fucking hurts!” Mickey screams as he tries to sit back up to not much avail. His dad’s beat him up loads of times and he’s gotten into more than his fair share of fights, sure, but he’s never been shot and fucking hell if it isn’t more painful than a cigarette burn or some wild drunken punches.

            “Kash, call 911,” Ian orders. He doesn’t hear any movement behind him, so he turns his head and tells him to fucking call 911 right now.

            Ian disappears out the back as soon as he sees the police car/ambulance brigade. He doesn’t want to deal with police questions, although he can’t imagine they’ll be any. A Milkovich got shot in medias res of committing a crime in a ghetto South Side minimart. Something just like that happened just a month ago probably, and he knows even if the cops are racist fucks they’ll still side with Kash over a greasy white ghetto kid who they probably brush elbows with every other day.

            He tells Lip that there was a shooting at the minimart but not that the reason Kash shot Mickey was to get back at him, on the porch while they have a few smokes. He’s still wearing Mickey’s scarf and he’s not stupid enough to get caught by Mandy or Lip and then have to explain that shit, so he’s tucked it into his shirt. Fuck, he is in too fucking deep with Mickey Milkovich because he glances at it again and imagines grabbing his fingers through Mickey’s hair and pushing his head down farther on his dick. Then he thinks of him on his cock again.

             He hears Monica shouting from the living room about a family game night, and isn’t surprised when Lip comes in with a dirty sneer.

            “She’s fucking wrong if she thinks she’ll get us to trust her again,” Lip says, climbing up onto his bunk.

            Ian grunts non-committally. He’s not a fan of Monica, and he’s not about to go to a mother-son dance with her or even pretend to like her shitty lasagna, but his dislike of her is limited to thinking she’s a shitty mom and person, almost as bad as her food.

            “She’ll be gone in a few days, and Fiona will be back to doing all the shit she does around here, plus picking Debbie off the floor,” Lip says, flipping open a magazine.

            “Yeah,” he replies. There’s a short silence between them. “Maybe we’ll get some shit out of it.”

            “Monica doesn’t have any fucking money,” Lip laughs bitterly. “Otherwise, we’d be kissing her ass and getting her to buy us mobile phones or something.”

            “Yeah, you’re right,” Ian replies. “Is the heat still working? It’s fucking freezing in here,” he says buttoning up his coat and getting up to look for his gloves.

            “Shit, Ian, is that blood on your shirt?” Lip asks, squinting in the dim room.

            “Nah, I think it’s sauce or something.”

            “Bullshit, Ian.”

            Ian rolls his eyes. “Bullshit or not, I’m gonna head out. Monica isn’t gonna go grocery shopping.”

            Lip chuckles, blood forgotten. “I’ll come with you, let’s see if we can get some cash from her purse.

            Monica can’t see the kitchen from her vantage point in the living room, and Lip finds her wallet in the jacket pocket while Ian rummages through her purse (where he finds no money but a lot of full prescriptions that clearly haven’t been opened).

            Apparently his brother is more successful, because a moment later Lip mouths, “Twenty-six bucks!” with a shrug that says “not bad”, pocketing the cash and returning the billfold into the coat.

            So he goes to the grocery store with Lip, knowing full and well that Lip is only here to spite Monica by spending her cash. Milk is on sale and they’re out, along with another two loaves of bread, peanut butter, a bulk package of canned peaches and shitty fruit for the lunches, instant oatmeal, and cereal. They have ninety cents left so they buy a chocolate bar that they’ll split up between their siblings once Monica and Bob are back to their love nest and have forgotten all about “family game night.”

            “You doing okay? There’s a lot been going on,” Lip remarks.

            “Yeah,” Ian replies.

            “Weird having Monica back,” he says with a shrug.

            “Yeah, that too,” he says, turning to look out the car window.

            “What? Something else?”

            “It’s kind of hard to explain,” he says. Whenever Lip gets serious about getting answers, deflecting usually works.

            “Mickey’s gay, and we’re doing it. And Kash shot Mickey because of me, but Mickey would rather go to juvie than admit he’s gay. So I’m doing both Kash and Mickey. Well, not so much Kash lately. But when Kash and me were hot and heavy, Linda found out about it, and she’s blackmailing Kash into having another kid,” he says in a huge breath. He sighs. Shit, well that felt better than he expected it would.

            “Holy shit,” Lip says.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Monica leaves, like they all knew she would, and drops the shit about wanting to raise Liam and make a family with Bob. Maybe after trying to whip together four school lunches with a loaf of bread and a single Oreo made her realise that she wasn’t gonna do anything right that Fiona did wrong. In fact, she would have fucked up a lot more, and the Gallagher siblings stick together.

            Lip wants him to try to get presents and shit from his biological father Clayton, but he doesn’t care all that much. Despite the fact that they’re always scrounging around for money when bills are due and Debbie needs a new coat but there just isn’t enough, he likes living with his siblings. He likes Fiona, and appreciates her uncanny ability to find rich boyfriends, he likes Debbie and her unwavering optimism, Liam’s just a baby so he can’t really hate him, and Carl’s fucking annoying but there’s always hope that he might turn out to not be a serial killer.

            He goes to the movies with Mandy, sneaks in while the guy she blew covers their asses.

            “Is this your boyfriend?” the teenager who sneaked them in through the fire exit asks Mandy. Ian’s used to jealous boys trying to get rid of him, which is ironic on more than a few levels, but he’s usually just amused by it. They get a real kick out of it together.

            “Yeah, doucheface,” Mandy replies with a smirk. “And he’s real jealous, so back off,” she adds.

            “Me and you gonna have a problem?” Ian asks him, drawing himself up so he’s not slouching any more. He’s pleased to find that he’s got at least a few inches on the guy.

            “No, not at all,” he answers nervously.

            They giggle and watch shitty movies together in the back of almost empty theatres at 3 pm, and Ian wants to ask about Mickey but doesn’t.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Ian visits Mickey in juvie. He didn’t expect it to be so much like jail.

            A guard gives him a pretty thorough pat down, and makes him empty all his pockets. “Don’t try anything cute,” the guard tells him.

            “Wasn’t planning on it,” he answers, probably with too much cheek, and he gives him a dirty look. He’s led into the visitor room, and shit, it’s like those federal prison things he sees sometimes on television documentaries. There’s even a glass wall, and it’s got to be more than a few centimetres thick.

            He sinks into one of the seats and takes the phone off the wall. Mickey thanks him for manipulating Kash into putting money in his commissary. Then Ian asks the question that he’s been wanting to way before got the pat-down in the lobby and sat down in the visiting window, since he found out Mickey was heading back to juvie.

            “How long?” he asks. His voice sounds thicker than he intended it to.

            Mickey doesn’t play dumb, which is something, at least. “I dunno. Supposed to be a year, right? Maybe only a couple months if I don’t do anything stupid.”

            “Like what?’

            “Like stab that fat fucking mick who keeps trying to steel my Jell-O!” he shouts, leaning so he’s looking at someone Mickey can’t see.

            “Who, me?” he hears someone shout.

            “Yeah!"

            “Fuck you!” the guy shouts, and Ian shifts uncomfortably.

            “I miss you,” he tells him. He does. He’s fucking smitten with Mickey Milkovich and his life just got a whole hell of a lot more complicated.

            Mickey threatens to rip his tongue out of his head, just like he did when Ian tried to kiss him, and he smiles. It’s a threat, sure, but Ian can see the way he looks to each side of him to make sure no one is listening or watching before his facial expression softens. Ian feels a rough sort of affection.

            “Take your fucking fingers off the glass,” Mickey orders, eyes fleeting around like he’s under attack.

            “Right,” Ian replies, returning his hand to the table. “So, do you think you’ll get out for good behaviour or something?”

            Mickey snorts and scratches the side of his face. “Do you really think Mickey Milkovich and good behaviour belong in the same sentence? God, you can be real fucking stupid.”

            “But you don’t want to spend too long here, right?” Ian asks him, suddenly feeling a hell of a lot more confident. “’Cause once you get out I can reward your good behaviour, Mick,” he says, raising one of his eyebrows.

            “Gallagher, do me a favour and shut the hell up,” he replies.

            “You want me to?” Ian asks him.

            “Yeah, I fucking do.”

            “I was under the impression that you loved the sound of my voice,” Ian says cheekily, and Mickey appears as if he wants to take a swing at him.

            “I’m gonna fucking off you one day, Gallagher.”

            “Don’t you mean jack off? Suck off?” Ian suggests.         

            “I mean fuck off,” he replies peevishly. “Someone is going to fucking hear you,” Mickey says lowly, turning his head a few times to each side. No one jumps up to beat the shit out of him or call him names, but it still doesn’t feel safe to be hurling around those types of words in a facility run by the Department of Corrections, where it is very definitively every man for himself.

            “Visiting time’s up!” the same guard shouts into the room.

            Ian wishes Mickey well, for which he is flicked off, and leaves the building to check the bus schedule. The L doesn’t have a track that goes directly to the juvie, and it was a 45-minute bus ride here, so he asked Lip to pick him up. Lip also flicked him off but replied that he would think about it, so Ian’s planning on hanging out in the parking lot for a while to see if he shows and if he doesn’t, he’ll walk the five kilometres to the next town, where there’s a cheaper bus to South Side that he might actually be able to afford without sneaking on.

            A car pulls up just as he’s planning to start walking, and the tinted window rolls down to reveal his older brother, who, while an arsehole most of the time, does actually come through occasionally. “Well, are you someone’s wife yet? I hear that you shouldn’t bend over to pick up your soap, although I guess for you that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

            “Fuck off,” Ian replies. “Where the hell did you get this ride?” Ian doesn’t know a thing about cars but it looks fucking expensive.

            “Where do you fucking think? Steve let me borrow it. And you better be fucking thankful for me picking you up in this shithole, you owe me big time.”

            Ian gets in the passenger seat with a grin. “Thanks, Lip. I’ll make it up to you.”

            “How’s our favourite Milkovich doing in prison?”

            “It’s juvie, not prison, and I didn’t ask.”

            “Why the hell did you come all the way out here? Actually, never mind. I have enough relationship problems without knowing yours,” he says, and Ian rolls his eyes. “This car has heated seats, if you press that button on the right it’ll start.”

            “What’s a seat warmer?” Ian asks as he flips the switch.

            “Fuck if I know, but my arse is burning. Rich people come up with all sorts of shit to put in their cars.”

            “Oh, that’s actually kinda nice. It is fucking cold,” he says, zipping up his sweatshirt and his jacket.

            “Like I said. Rich people don’t know how to put on a fucking coat.”

            “Truer words have never been said,” Ian agrees, starting to rifle through the glove compartment for a pack of cigarettes.

            “Don’t have any,” Lip replies.

            “Liar, you’ve got one right now.”

            “I’ll rephrase that. I don’t have any for _you_.”

            Ian flips him off.

            “Ah, fuck you,” his brother replies, taking an aggressive merge onto a highway that has numerous people hitting on their horns and Ian wishing that he put on a seatbelt. Rubbing his skull from where it impacted the inner wall of the car, Ian clicks the belt on. “This better be the only time I pick you up from juvie. Don’t actually get tossed in there. You’d probably end up someone’s bitch, and not in a positive, life-affirming way.”

            “As if,” Ian snorts. “You do know I don’t exactly take that role, right?” he says, grinning at his insinuation.

            “Aw, fuck, really? You top that Milkovich kid?” Lip asks in shock, taking another drag on his cigarette. Lip must have done some special favours for the driving tester to get his license because he’s pretty fucking reckless.

            “Fuck yeah, I do,” Ian replies with a confident grin.

            “Mandy doesn’t know, right? That you’re fucking her brother?” Lip asks, taking another aggressive left turn.

            “Yeah, and you better keep it that way, big mouth,” Ian warns.

            “Wasn’t planning on it. But we are heading out with her later to break some windows and steal some shit from some old guy who apparently fucked with her. Screwed her over and posted some shit about her online or something.”

            “Bad idea to fuck with Mandy Milkovich,” Ian laughs. Sorry for the poor old fool, and whatever he did to mess with her, because he won’t be living very long- especially once Mickey and the rest of the rest of the Milkovich males gets out of jail.

            “Yeah, no fucking kidding. It should be fun, are you in?”

            “Nah, I think my West Point application is all good without any felony vandalism charges,” he replies.

            “Since when did you care about getting in trouble? I always take the fall for you anyways,” Lip teases.  
            “Guess I don’t want to go to juvie,” Ian answers with a shrug.

            “Isn’t that cute, getting inspired by your boyfriend’s incarceration?” Lip turns his head away from the road to make a sarcastically impressed expression at him. “You gonna help him get his GED and shit next? Tell him that there’s more to life than crime?”

            “Fuck off, Lip.”

            “Really not gonna come to Mandy’s gig? Are you sure West Point doesn’t like white ghetto kids with criminal records?”

            Ian laughs. “I think I’m sure.”

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            After Ian and Mandy pick Mickey up from juvie and eat dinner at the Milkovich residence, they lose Mandy and head out to the baseball field. They talk for a bit, but it ends up the way it always ends up: with Mickey bending over. They shotgun a can of beer and then he’s propositioned with the subtle elegance that only the Milkoviches possess.

            “You wanna chitchat more, or you wanna get on me?” The smirk Mickey tosses his way is more than enough to entice him, so he grins and they both hastily drop trou, because fuck yes, Ian wants to get on him.

            He would really like to kiss Mickey or suck marks onto his skin, but he knows that he won’t be having that, so he settles for gripping the nape of his neck with considerable force as he pushes him down. Mickey grips the rim of the dugout, knuckles whitening as he takes it all, everything Ian gives him.

            “Fuck, Gallagher,” he says, and Ian reaches for Mickey’s cock to finish them both up. Ian wraps up the condom in the wrapper and throws it near the trashcan.

            “Always wanted to do that here!” Mickey shouts triumphantly to the empty field as the sprinklers flick on. “Get back at that Little League commissioner who kicked me off my baseball team for pissing on first base.”

            “I remember,” Ian recalls. He’s known Mickey for longer than he would have liked, and if he his memory serves him right they were in the same first grade class. Yeah, he was, because Mickey tried to scalp some kid with safety scissors in the bathroom.

            “You heard about that?”

            “I was playing second,” he answers, pulling himself up onto the roof of the dugout to do a few pull ups.

            “Fucking tough guy, huh?” Mickey asks with an easys smile.

            Ian grunts and hops off the bar after cranking a few more out. Mickey pulls himself up, and yeah, he does all right with a few. He’s no hulk (and he’s probably still only like 60 kilos), but he’s obviously worked out recently, and he manages at least five without breathing too heavily.

            “Not much to do in the joint but work out,” he remarks, hopping down.

            “You could read,” Ian suggests half-heartedly.

            “Fuck off,” Mickey replies. “I’m fucked for life anyway, man.”

            They go back and forth, back and forth, until Ian suggests that he work for Kash and Grab. He needs a steady job for the conditions of his parole, and maybe it’s a poor plan to have his boyfriend work somewhere he got shot at for the guy Ian used to fuck, but it’s better than Mickey ending up a quadruple amputee. Linda might even agree, who knows?

            “You ready to go again, or uh, you need some time, Fire crotch?” he teases, and Ian smirks.

            Jesus, this boy is going to turn him into some type of nymphomaniac. He grins and shoves Mickey back over for another fuck, because they need to make up for lost time.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Lip’s always been a fucking arsehole, but at least usually he’s an arsehole on Ian’s side. But now he’s a fucking arsehole who’s screwing with his future, and he is not about to roll over and let himself be screwed over.

            So yeah, he beats the shit out of his brother (not that Lip doesn't get his fair share of flesh too). Ian wants to go to West Point, more than anything he’s ever wanted in his life. He’s not crazy smart or some shit like Lip is but he can run fast, shoot well, and do a lot of push-ups. He works hard, and that should count for something but it never does around here. Lip does jack shit and gets a fucking war hero clamouring to recommend him.

            Debbie’s going on about something related to school clothes, asking him which ones will look good which with, but Ian needs to finish his sit-ups today and he knows shit about clothes. He’s gay, but not some fashion expert. Lip offers his opinion- something about blue and pink- and Ian decidedly doesn’t look at him.

            “Pathetic,” he remarks finally.

            Lip turns round and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Ladies and gentlemen, he speaks!”

            “You could have anything you want,” Ian tells him furiously. Lip’s right, he has the golden ticket out of the South Side and into Harvard or MIT or wherever smart Physics kids go. “And this is the life you choose?”

            “I'm not gonna split on my kid like Frank!” Lip tells him, and Ian wants to fucking laugh because he’s such an idiot. All Lip’s stupid grand gestures aren’t going to change where the apple fell.

            “Fucking waste,” Ian grunts, about to turn away, but his brother grabs him.

            “You know what? You're the one that's pretending to date Mandy so you can fuck her brother,” Lip says, and that’s a low fucking blow. He told Lip because he trusted him just enough to believe that he wasn’t going to do something fucking stupid with the information. “You know, even the Pentagon says it's okay to be gay, but you're too chicken-shit to let anyone know.”

            So fucking what if Ian’s not out and proud to all of South Side. It doesn’t mean he’s scared, it means he’s got half a brain to know that his boyfriend will show up a corpse on Lake Michigan with his teeth pulled and fingertips cut off if anyone finds out about their dalliance.

            “At least I'm not getting trapped by some pregnant skank!” Ian shouts, and that’s when it comes to fisticuffs. They fight, yell some more things, and then Grammy shows up.

            Ian half expects her to tell them about the meaning of fraternal bonding or some shit, but then he remembers that his grandmother ran a meth lab, which ended up killing two innocent, non-meth-involved uni students when it exploded. Grammy tells them to duke it out to settle it, and he and Lip set a date and a time under the L.

            When it all comes down to it, Lip is still his brother. An arsehole of one, but he buys him a beer and they can pretend that Ian didn’t call Karen a “pregnant skank” and Lip didn’t tell Ian that he was “too chicken-shit” to admit that he likes to bone guys.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            “Shit, Gallagher, you’re thirsty today,” Mickey says once they’re safely hidden away from the security cameras in the backroom.

            Mickey throws him a dirty smile as they shed their clothes, which is a lot less work than it is in the winter. Ian pulls Mickey’s shirt over his head, and drops to his knees. He wrangles his trousers and pants down and starts sucking. He doesn’t do that kitten lick shit, and he’s done this enough by now to know how to take a fucking dick when he wants to. And fuck, he wants to.

            Once Mickey starts keening, he gets back on his feet and kisses Mickey on the neck, moving down to his collar bone. Like most stereotypical gay fuckbuddies, they haven’t really done all that kissing and making out stuff as much as one might think, given how many times they’ve screwed. At by not a lot, he means not at all. Never. He knows that he and Mickey aren’t going to cling to each other on an ice skating rink or go on gardening dates at the community centre or buy each other fucking flowers, but what does a kiss on the mouth harm?

            “Fuck, Gallagher,” Mickey groans. It’s vicious and hot like most of the fucks they have, and Mickey tears at Ian’s remaining clothes and his hands through Ian’s red hair (he won’t fucking admit it but the ginger thing kind of turns him on a little bit). The result is Mickey ass-up with Ian’s dick rubbing between his cheeks. He thrusts in, pulls halfway out, and then thrusts in again. It’s like clockwork, so much so that they don’t notice that someone’s around until he hears Frank voice a metre or so away, from the other side of the refrigerator unit.

            “Hello boys.”

            “Shit, shit, fuck,” Mickey breathes. They’ve quite literally been caught with their pants down (or more accurately off).

            “The front door was locked, so I came in the back. No pun intended,” Frank is saying, but Ian is only half listening because they’re both rushing to locate and put their clothes back on. Ian comes out and Frank is taking cash from the register and has a plastic bag of some shit, probably beer, and all Ian can think is that Linda is going to kill him. He realises he has a bigger problem when rank leaves, telling them, “As you are, sailors,” and Mickey looks ready to snap his father’s neck.

            “We gotta kill him,” Mickey says. Someone bangs on the locked door of the minimart, and Mick tells them to fuck off. He goes on and on about how they’re going to dump his body and the river, and no one’s gonna miss him and all this crazy shit.

            Ian knows better than anyone that Mickey’s fucking scared of his dad. He’s heard how the man talks- bragging all the fucking time about beating up queers in prison and talking about fags as if he’s some fucking saint compared to them (chronic alcoholic, abusive, rapist of his own daughter, most likely a paedophile). Ian likes Mickey a lot, which is fucking stupid, but he can’t help the way he likes his smirk and stupid laugh and his face when Ian sucks him off and fucks him.

            “Stay here, this won’t take long,” Mickey is saying to him, and Ian isn’t really sure what is happening but apparently his sort-of-boyfriend plans on killing his father.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            _“Frank's walked in on Fiona and all of her boyfriends, walked in on Lip and his girls. We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Mickey!” Ian shouts at him, because even though Terry will put them six feet under, he’s in prison and he’s got no fucking way of him finding out unless the other Gallagher brothers do, which they won’t because even if they did, they’d probably be too stoned to remember a thing._

_“What fucking world do you live in? What, you think we're boyfriend and girlfriend here? You're nothing but a warm mouth to me!”_

_That fucking hurts. Mickey and him have been hanging out for upwards of a year, and sometimes they talk about shit not related to sex. He doesn’t know if that makes Mickey his boyfriend (probably not), but it makes him a hell of a lot more than a warm mouth._

_“Sorry, I gotta go kill your dad, but I'm doing a lot of people a favour, including you."_

            Ian’s dad knows about him and Mickey, and Mickey tries to kill him but the cops show up before he can grab him and stick him in the back of their van. Mickey punches a fucking cop in the face to violate his probation, because he would rather be in juvie than face the fact that he’s gay. It’s fucking pathetic, really.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            “Hey sweetie, I made some cookies,” Monica tells him, and Ian shrugs. Of course Monica is fucking back. Flighty, finicky, probably not taking her meds still, refusing to admit that she’s actually got something wrong with her, same old, same old.

            “Oh so now we’re square for you abandoning us and everything,” Ian answers, returning the milk carton the refrigerator.

            “Are you coming with us to Carl's game?” Monica asks him.

            Ian snorts. Of course he is. “Yeah, I'm going to Carl's game. I always go to Carl's games, 'cause I actually give a shit.” He leaves the second part of the statement unspoken ( _Unlike you_.)

            “Ian Clayton Gallagher, I told you, you do not talk to your mother like that,” Frank says, raising his voice. Ian rolls his eyes. He loves being the anti-favourite, at least it means that he's not as subjected to emotional abuse like Fiona and Lip are.

            “You haven't even claimed your mom's body from the morgue and you want to tell me how to treat mine?”  Ian exclaims.

            “He's got a point,” Monica pipes up. At least she can admit her husband’s fault, maybe it’ll be her own next.  “Your dad told me about the kid in the store,” she says, and Ian bites his lip. Maybe he should have let Mickey kill Frank; it might’ve been easier than dealing with this Now Monica’s going to think that they’ve got something in common or some shit, like not scoring a null on the Kinsey Scale. To Ian’s annoyance, she continues, “You must be sad having someone you care about in jail. But you should never feel ashamed about what and who you are.”

            “I'm not,” he grits out. If he lived in fucking North Side and his boyfriend wasn’t such a fucking pathetic coward, maybe he’d be out to everyone. Although he doesn’t understand why everyone thinks that being gay or bi or lesbo or whatever is something that needs to be public knowledge. He isn’t fucking ashamed; he isn’t.

            “Well, when I was with Roberta, I was proud. No, it wasn't a perfect relationship, but we were never ashamed.”

            “Maybe you should have been,” he tells her, cocking an eyebrow. The fact that they were both girls doesn’t change the fact that they’re both shitty people.

            “So how about after Carl's game, I take you out? Cheer you up,” she suggests.

            “Maybe,” he replies without implying any sort of commitment.

            He goes out with Monica, and even though he doesn’t trust her she’s nice to at least care somewhat about his troubles with Mickey. He tells her that it’s his fault Mickey’s in juvie, which is mostly true, and they actually have an okay time together at the club that she dragged him to. Just as soon as she arrived, she is gone once more and by now Ian has learned not to be surprised.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Ian’s pissed enough about the fact that Frank waltzed back into their house with his ruined bicycle and plenty of self-pity and ability to take advantage of Debbie’s good heart that he fucks this annoying kid whose on the same JROTC squad as he is.

            He’s really annoying, but he needs to let out some steam because Frank is a fucking arsehole like always and he’s sick of it.

            It seems like fucking the kid might have had at least one advantage because Mickey shows up halfway through, having been let out for overcrowding (Ian wonders how bad juvie must be if Mickey was at the top of the list for being let out early; he did stab someone with a plastic fork).          

            “Thought you were still in juvie?” the kid he fucked asks nervously, hastily buttoning his trousers.

            “Not anymore,” Mickey replies, and almost immediately starts kicking the kid down. It’s a good punch, and usually even though Ian does not give a single fuck about the kid he might stop the altercation but to be honest he’s shocked to see him again. Mickey, out of juvie?

            “Got any fuck left in you, or you dump it all in that faggot’s ass?” Mickey asks with a smirk, and Ian swings over to him on the bars with a certain glint in his eyes.

            He and Mickey smoke a few cigs under the bleachers after they’re done, and Ian’s never really felt like the universe has done him a lot of favours but this is one for the books because now the prospect of four more months sounds daunting.

            “Wanna head over to the dugout tonight?” Mick asks him.

            “Am I being asked out on a date?” Ian inquires, taking a long exhale of nicotine and arsenic and whatever other poisonous chemicals are put in cigarettes.

            “Fuck off, Gallagher,” he replies. “I ain’t your fucking boyfriend.”

            “I know,” he replies, and that is that.

            Later, Ian’s at his house installing a lock on his bedroom door. Ian can’t help but find Mandy’s ideas, that Lip can go off to uni and be successful, a little sad. She’s got so much hope for him, but anyone who knows Lip long enough loses that when they realise that he may be the smartest person on all of South Side, but he’d rather get high and drunk and knock up girls like Karen Jackson than study.

            “Hey, can I ask you a question?” he manages even though she’s already halfway down the hallway. Now that Mickey’s back and things are back to normal- well as normal as they’ve ever gotten between them- Ian has come to the conclusion that sitting on his ass and waiting for Mickey to realise feelings that may or may not exist is probably not the most productive use of his time. And since he happens to have a friend who is quite an expert on this shit, he sucks up his pride and asks her.

            “Sure,” she answers, turning back around and joining him in the bedroom doorway.

            “How do you know if a guy you've been hanging out with likes you?” he asks, trying to keep his voice casual. She doesn’t know it but he is asking about her brother after all.

            “You like him?” she inquires.

            Ian nods. “Uh-huh, but I think he hates me.” That isn’t exactly true, Mickey doesn’t hate him, but he’s not sure exactly where he stands. Other than above him naked sometimes.

            “Ask him.”

            “Doesn't want to talk about it,” he replies.

            She grins wickedly, leaning against the doorframe. “No guy ever does.”

            “How do I know, then?”

            “Does he get that look in his eye when he's with you?” she asks with a raised eyebrow.

            His eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What look?”

             “You'll know when you see it,” she says, and Ian knows he hasn’t been looking so he decides to start.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Frank shows up again.

            Ian is furious enough that his vision is blurry at the edges, and the only thought running through his mind right now is kicking the shit out of Frank and his free-loading friends. His piss-poor excuse for a father has trashed his only source of legal transportation, his bicycle, and he watches furiously from the living room as the three idiots bumble into the kitchen.

            “Do you have sourdough?” one of them asks.

            Fiona doesn’t take shit from people, and maybe she’s screwing them over with this club thing and she hasn’t exactly been a great role model in the past few months, but at least she won’t let these fools walk over them. “Hey! This is our food!”

            “Don’t be rude!” Frank slurs, and Ian and Lip make eye contact. They’re going to fucking kill him. Debbie beats the shit out of him with some bars of soap in a pillow case (don’t break the nice ones, it’s a bad fucking idea). They want to kill him but they’ll settle for carrying him out and throwing his drunk ass in the dumpster where he belongs.

=___=___=___=___=___=___=___=

            Mickey kisses him on the mouth. In the van, just before he heads inside to join his cousins in the robbery. It’s brief and Mickey flicks him off in jest when he runs back in Dr. L’s house to steal shit, but Ian is hardly thinking about possible profits when his world just imploded on itself.

            Mickey kissed him. He puts his fingers to his lips like a fucking girl and glances around the empty neighbourhood street.

**Author's Note:**

> I've only been living in America for a few weeks so I used British English and slang because that's what I know better and feel more comfortable with...If it feels weird to you whoops sorry <3  
> Title is from _Crush_ by Richard Siken.


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